Welcome to Data Science!

In this homework, we’ll be working on getting you set up with the tools you will need for this class. Once you are set up, we’ll do what we’re here to do: analyze data!

Here’s what we will accomplish by the end of the assignment:

  1. Getting started with R
  2. Getting started with RStudio
  3. Analyze Data
  4. <….>
  5. Profit! (profitability may vary by user)

Introductions

We need two basic sets of tools for this class. We will need R to analyze data. We will need RStudio to help us interface with R and to produce documentation of our results.

Installing R

R is going to be the only programming language we will use. R is an extensible statistical programming environment that can handle all of the main tasks that we’ll need to cover this semester: getting data, analyzing data and communicating data analysis.

If you haven’t already, you need to download R here: https://cran.r-project.org/.

Installing RStudio

When we work with R, we communicate via the command line. To help automate this process, we can write scripts, which contain all of the commands to be executed. These scripts generate various kinds of output, like numbers on the screen, graphics or reports in common formats (pdf, word). Most programming languages have several I ntegrated D evelopment E nvironments (IDEs) that encompass all of these elements (scripts, command line interface, output). The primary IDE for R is RStudio.

If you haven’t already, you need to download RStudio here: https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/. You need the free RStudio desktop version.

Accessing Files and Using Directories

In each class, we’re going to include some code and text in one file, and data in another file. You’ll need to download both of these files to your computer. You need to have a particular place to put these files. Computers are organized using named directories (sometimes called folders). Don’t just put the files in your Downloads directory. One common solution is to created a directory on your computer named after the class: psc_4175. Each time you access the files, you’ll want to place them in that directory.

Yes We Code! Running R Code

We’re going to grab some data that’s part of the college scorecard and do a bit of analysis on it.

.Rmd Set Up

Open RStudio, then create a new .Rmd file. To do this, click on File → New File → R Markdown....

You will then be asked to determine a bunch of settings for this .Rmd document. For example, you can choose whether you want to create a “Document”, “Presentation”, “Shiny”, or “From Template” on the left. You can set the “Title:” “Author:” and “Date:” on the top-right. And you can choose the “Default Output Format:” to be either “HTML”, “PDF”, or “Word”. You should not change any of these settings. Their defaults (“Document”, “Untitled”, “[Your name]”, “[Today’s Date]”, and “HTML”) are sufficient. Just click “OK”.

Copy the raw code from the psc4175_hw_1.Rmd file by clicking on the copy button as shown in the image below.

Finally, replace the default code in your R Markdown file with the copied code from the GitHub!

If viewing this as an html file, you can view this gif for more help!

.Rmd Files

.Rmd files will be the only file format we work in this class. .Rmd files contain three basic elements:

  1. Script that can be interpreted by R.
  2. Output generated by R, including tables and figures.
  3. Text that can be read by humans.

From a .Rmd file you can generate html documents, pdf documents, word documents, slides . . . lots of stuff. All class notes will be in .Rmd. Most assignments will be turned in as .Rmd files, and the guided exercise we’ll have you do? You guessed it, .Rmd.

In the .Rmd file you’ll notice that there are three open single quotes in a row, like so: ``` This indicates the start of a “code chunk” in our file. The first code chunk that we load will include a set of programs that we will need all semester long.

Outputting results

I like to see results in the Console. By default Rstudio will output results from an Rmd file inline– meaning in the document itself. To change this, go to Tools–>global Options–>R Markdown, and uncheck the box for “show output inline for all Rmarkdown documents.”

Using R Libraries

When we say that R is extensible, we mean that people in the community can write programs that everyone else can use. These are called “packages.” In these first few lines of code, I load a set of packages using the library command in R. The set of packages, called tidyverse were written by Hadley Wickham and others and play a key role in his book. To install this set of packages, simply type in install.packages("tidyverse") at the R command prompt. Alternatively, you can use the “Packages” pane in the lower right hand corner of your Rstudio screen. Click on Packages, then click on install, then type in “tidyverse.”

To run the code below in R, you can:

## Get necessary libraries-- won't work the first time, because you need to install them!
# install.packages("tidyverse")  # Uncomment this to install
library(tidyverse)

Here’s the thing about packages. There’s a difference between installing a package and calling a package. Installing means that the package is on your computer and available to use. Calling a package means that the commands in the package will be used in this session. A “session” is basically when R has been opened up on your computer. As long as R/Rstudio are open and running, the session is active.

It’s a good practice to shutdown R/Rstudio once you’re no longer working on it, and then to restart it when you begin working again. Otherwise, the working environment can get pretty crowded with data and packages.

Loading Datasets

Now we’re ready to load in data. The data frame will be our basic way of interacting with everything in this class. The sc_debt.Rds (found here: https://github.com/rweldzius/PSC4175_F2024/blob/main/Data/sc_debt.Rds) data frame contains information from the college scorecard on different colleges and universities.

tidyverse includes a read_rds() function that can read data directly from the internet.

df <- read_rds('https://github.com/rweldzius/PSC4175_F2024/raw/main/Data/sc_debt.Rds')

You’ll notice that the code above starts with df. This is just an arbitrary name for an object. You could name it dat or raw or debt or whatever you want. Then there’s an arrow <-. This is an assignment operator. Then there’s a function, readRDS, with parentheses, and an argument “sc_debt.Rds”. Here’s how to think about this.

So the command above says “use readRDS to open the file”sc_debt.Rds” and assign the result to the object df.

Let’s take a quick look at the object df

df
## # A tibble: 2,546 × 16
##    unitid instnm   stabbr grad_debt_mdn control region preddeg openadmp adm_rate
##     <int> <chr>    <chr>          <int> <chr>   <chr>  <chr>      <int>    <dbl>
##  1 100654 Alabama… AL             33375 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.918
##  2 100663 Univers… AL             22500 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.737
##  3 100690 Amridge… AL             27334 Private South… Associ…        1   NA    
##  4 100706 Univers… AL             21607 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.826
##  5 100724 Alabama… AL             32000 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.969
##  6 100751 The Uni… AL             23250 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.827
##  7 100760 Central… AL             12500 Public  South… Associ…        1   NA    
##  8 100812 Athens … AL             19500 Public  South… Bachel…       NA   NA    
##  9 100830 Auburn … AL             24826 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.904
## 10 100858 Auburn … AL             21281 Public  South… Bachel…        2    0.807
## # ℹ 2,536 more rows
## # ℹ 7 more variables: ccbasic <int>, sat_avg <int>, md_earn_wne_p6 <int>,
## #   ugds <int>, costt4_a <int>, selective <dbl>, research_u <dbl>

This is just the first part of the data frame. All data frames have the exact same structure. Each row is a case. In this example, each row is a college. Each column is a characteristics of the case, what we call a variable. Let’s use the names command to see what variables are in the dataset.

names(df)
##  [1] "unitid"         "instnm"         "stabbr"         "grad_debt_mdn" 
##  [5] "control"        "region"         "preddeg"        "openadmp"      
##  [9] "adm_rate"       "ccbasic"        "sat_avg"        "md_earn_wne_p6"
## [13] "ugds"           "costt4_a"       "selective"      "research_u"

It’s hard to know what these mean without some more information. We usually use a codebook to get more information about a dataset. Because we use very short names for variables, it’s useful to have some more information (fancy name: metadata) that tells us about those variables. Below you’ll see the R name for each variable next to a description of each variable.

Name Definition
unitid Unit ID
instnm Institution Name
stabbr State Abbreviation
grad_debt_mdn Median Debt of Graduates
control Control Public or Private
region Census Region
preddeg Predominant Degree Offered: Associates or Bachelors
openadmp Open Admissions Policy: 1= Yes, 2=No,3=No 1st time students
adm_rate Admissions Rate: proportion of applications accepted
ccbasic Type of institution– see here
selective Institution admits fewer than 10 % of applicants, 1=Yes, 0=No
research_u Institution is a research university 1=Yes, 0=No
sat_avg Average Sat Scores
md_earn_wne_p6 Average Earnings of Recent Graduates
ugds Number of undergraduates
costt4a Average cost of attendance (tuition-grants)

Looking at datasets

We can also look at the whole dataset using View. Just delete the # sign below to make the code work. That # sign is a comment in R code, which indicates to the computer that everything on that line should be ignored. To get it to run, we need to drop the #.

#View(df)

You’ll notice that this data is arranged in a rectangular format, with each row showing a different college, and each column representing a different characteristic of that college. Datasets are always structured this way— cases (or units) will form the rows, and the characteristics of those cases– or variables— will form the columns. Unlike working with spreadsheets, this structure is always assumed for datasets.

Filter, Select, Arrange

In exploring data, many times we want to look at smaller parts of the dataset. There are three commands we’ll use today that help with this.

-filter selects only those cases or rows that meet some logical criteria.

-select selects only those variables or columns that meet some criteria

-arrange arranges the rows of a dataset in the way we want.

For more on these, please see this vignette.

Let’s grab just the data for Villanova, then look only at the average test scores and admit rate. We can use filter to look at all of the variables for Villanova:

df%>%
  filter(instnm=="Villanova University")
## # A tibble: 1 × 16
##   unitid instnm    stabbr grad_debt_mdn control region preddeg openadmp adm_rate
##    <int> <chr>     <chr>          <int> <chr>   <chr>  <chr>      <int>    <dbl>
## 1 216597 Villanov… PA             26000 Private North… Bachel…        2    0.282
## # ℹ 7 more variables: ccbasic <int>, sat_avg <int>, md_earn_wne_p6 <int>,
## #   ugds <int>, costt4_a <int>, selective <dbl>, research_u <dbl>

What’s that weird looking %>% thing? That’s called a pipe. This is how we chain commands together in R. Think of it as saying “and then” to R. In the above case, we said, take the data and then filter it to be just the data where the institution name is Vanderbilt University.

The command above says the following:

Take the dataframe df and then filter it to just those cases where instnm is equal to “Villanova University.” Notice the “double equals” sign, that’s a logical operator asking if instnm is equal to “Villanova University.”

Many times, though we don’t want to see everything, we just want to choose a few variables. select allows us to select only the variables we want. In this case, the institution name, its admit rate, and the average SAT scores of entering students.

df%>%
  filter(instnm=="Villanova University")%>%
  select(instnm,adm_rate,sat_avg)
## # A tibble: 1 × 3
##   instnm               adm_rate sat_avg
##   <chr>                   <dbl>   <int>
## 1 Villanova University    0.282    1422

filter takes logical tests as its argument. The code insntnm=="Villanova University" is a logical statement that will be true of just one case in the dataset– when institution name is Vanderbilt University. The == is a logical test, asking if this is equal to that. Other common logical and relational operators for R include

Next, we can use filter to look at colleges with low admissions rates, say less than 10% ( or .1 in the proportion scale used in the dataset).

df%>%
  filter(adm_rate<.1)%>%
  select(instnm,adm_rate,sat_avg)%>%
  arrange(sat_avg,adm_rate)%>%
  print(n=20)
## # A tibble: 25 × 3
##    instnm                                      adm_rate sat_avg
##    <chr>                                          <dbl>   <int>
##  1 Colby College                                 0.0967    1456
##  2 Swarthmore College                            0.0893    1469
##  3 Pomona College                                0.074     1480
##  4 Dartmouth College                             0.0793    1500
##  5 Stanford University                           0.0434    1503
##  6 Northwestern University                       0.0905    1506
##  7 Columbia University in the City of New York   0.0545    1511
##  8 Brown University                              0.0707    1511
##  9 University of Pennsylvania                    0.0766    1511
## 10 Vanderbilt University                         0.0912    1515
## 11 Harvard University                            0.0464    1517
## 12 Princeton University                          0.0578    1517
## 13 Yale University                               0.0608    1517
## 14 Rice University                               0.0872    1520
## 15 Duke University                               0.076     1522
## 16 University of Chicago                         0.0617    1528
## 17 Massachusetts Institute of Technology         0.067     1547
## 18 California Institute of Technology            0.0642    1557
## 19 Saint Elizabeth College of Nursing            0           NA
## 20 Yeshivat Hechal Shemuel                       0           NA
## # ℹ 5 more rows

Now let’s look at colleges with low admit rates, and order them using arrange by SAT scores (-sat_avg gives descending order).

df%>%
  filter(adm_rate<.1)%>%
  select(instnm,adm_rate,sat_avg)%>%
  arrange(-sat_avg)
## # A tibble: 25 × 3
##    instnm                                      adm_rate sat_avg
##    <chr>                                          <dbl>   <int>
##  1 California Institute of Technology            0.0642    1557
##  2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology         0.067     1547
##  3 University of Chicago                         0.0617    1528
##  4 Duke University                               0.076     1522
##  5 Rice University                               0.0872    1520
##  6 Yale University                               0.0608    1517
##  7 Harvard University                            0.0464    1517
##  8 Princeton University                          0.0578    1517
##  9 Vanderbilt University                         0.0912    1515
## 10 Columbia University in the City of New York   0.0545    1511
## # ℹ 15 more rows

And one last operation: all colleges that admit between 20 and 30 percent of students, looking at their SAT scores, earnings of attendees six years letter, and what state they are in, then arranging by state, and then SAT score.

df%>%
  filter(adm_rate>.2&adm_rate<.3)%>%
  select(instnm,sat_avg,md_earn_wne_p6,stabbr)%>%
  arrange(stabbr,-sat_avg)%>%
  print(n=40)
## # A tibble: 37 × 4
##    instnm                                          sat_avg md_earn_wne_p6 stabbr
##    <chr>                                             <int>          <int> <chr> 
##  1 Heritage Christian University                        NA             NA AL    
##  2 University of California-Santa Barbara             1370          39000 CA    
##  3 California Polytechnic State University-San Lu…    1342          52100 CA    
##  4 University of California-Irvine                    1306          41100 CA    
##  5 California Institute of the Arts                     NA          26900 CA    
##  6 University of Miami                                1371          47500 FL    
##  7 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus        1418          65500 GA    
##  8 Point University                                    986          27300 GA    
##  9 Grinnell College                                   1457          32800 IA    
## 10 St Luke's College                                    NA          45300 IA    
## 11 Purdue University Northwest                        1074             NA IN    
## 12 Alice Lloyd College                                1040          25300 KY    
## 13 Wellesley College                                  1452          44900 MA    
## 14 Boston College                                     1437          57000 MA    
## 15 Brandeis University                                1434          41700 MA    
## 16 Babson College                                     1362          70400 MA    
## 17 Laboure College                                      NA          52000 MA    
## 18 Coppin State University                             903          28500 MD    
## 19 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor                   1448          49800 MI    
## 20 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill        1402          41000 NC    
## 21 University of North Carolina School of the Arts    1202          23800 NC    
## 22 Cabarrus College of Health Sciences                1063          41600 NC    
## 23 Carolina University                                 979             NA NC    
## 24 Wake Forest University                               NA          51100 NC    
## 25 Webb Institute                                     1465             NA NY    
## 26 Vassar College                                     1452          36100 NY    
## 27 Colgate University                                 1437          47700 NY    
## 28 University of Rochester                            1418          44800 NY    
## 29 Case Western Reserve University                    1436          59600 OH    
## 30 Denison University                                 1328          38900 OH    
## 31 Kettering College                                  1135          48800 OH    
## 32 Art Academy of Cincinnati                           958          22400 OH    
## 33 Villanova University                               1422          62600 PA    
## 34 Rhode Island School of Design                      1349          40300 RI    
## 35 Trinity University                                 1381          45700 TX    
## 36 University of Virginia-Main Campus                 1436          50300 VA    
## 37 University of Richmond                             1395          46900 VA

Quick Exercise Choose a different college and two different things about that college. Have R print the output.

# INSERT CODE HERE

Summarizing Data

To summarize data, we use the summarize command. Inside that command, we tell R two things: what to call the new variable that we’re creating, and what numerical summary we would like. The code below summarizes median debt for the colleges in the dataset by calculating the average of median debt for all institutions.

df%>%
  summarize(mean_debt=mean(grad_debt_mdn,na.rm=TRUE))
## # A tibble: 1 × 1
##   mean_debt
##       <dbl>
## 1    19646.
df%>%
  summarize(median_debt=median(grad_debt_mdn,na.rm=TRUE))
## # A tibble: 1 × 1
##   median_debt
##         <int>
## 1       21500

Quick Exercise Summarize the average entering SAT scores in this dataset.

# INSERT CODE HERE

Combining Commands

We can also combine commands, so that summaries are done on only a part of the dataset. Below, we summarize median debt for selective schools, and not very selective schools.

df%>%
  filter(adm_rate<.1)%>%
  summarize(mean_debt=mean(grad_debt_mdn,na.rm=TRUE))
## # A tibble: 1 × 1
##   mean_debt
##       <dbl>
## 1    16178.

What about for not very selective schools?

df%>%
  filter(adm_rate>.3)%>%
  summarize(mean_debt=mean(grad_debt_mdn,na.rm=TRUE))
## # A tibble: 1 × 1
##   mean_debt
##       <dbl>
## 1    23230.

Quick Exercise Calculate average earnings for schools where SAT>1200

# INSERT CODE HERE

Quick Exercise Calculate the average debt for schools that admit over 50% of the students who apply.

# INSERT CODE HERE